


Another Stupid Pointless Mission

by anielle



Series: everything you've got [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ben Hargreeves and Luther Hargreeves also make appearances, Drug Use, Gen, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves should really just be his own content warning, Panic Attacks, Pre-Series, Whump, and also Featuring! incredibly unhealthy thinking patterns, but it is a pre-series fic dealing with how awful Klaus' whole life is so, it's from Klaus' pov okay there are lots of upsetting things, questionably a li'l torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-06 19:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19069567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anielle/pseuds/anielle
Summary: So screw him for wanting to be not homeless after the week he’d had, right? Klaus is at fault for whatever predicament he finds himself in, as he always is; he doesn’t have any right to complain about whatever Sir Reginald decides to charge as room and board.But it’s half-past high time to be gone. He’s leaving, right now. Or he might not get the chance. He comes to a literal crashing halt into a brother he didn’t expect to see here. He very much needs Diego to stop talking about anything to do with day-saving and get him immediately out of here.Funny how reliving childhood traumas doesn’t actually lead to the most fertile comedic ground. Or rather, deeply unfunny, which is the whole, of course, problem.(Follow-up to 'Bad Stuff in a Bad Place')





	Another Stupid Pointless Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Follow-up to 'Bad Stuff in a Bad Place.' It takes place a couple of weeks after that story ends.
> 
> Although I think you _could_ read this on its own (maybe?), it does spend some not insignificant time talking about events that happen in that, so it might be worth it to check that out first ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

So screw him for wanting to be not homeless after the week he’d had, right? If he was too jumpy to sleep on the streets and couldn’t stomach the thought of squirming his way into another almost-stranger’s place, if he thought he could come home to rest on a bed with no strings attached, well, Klaus is the asshole, then, isn’t he? He doesn’t have any right to complain about whatever Sir Reginald decides to charge as room and board if he chooses to come stay here. In, you know, his childhood home. 

Although Klaus can’t honestly commit to that particular line of self-righteous indignation - obviously there’s nothing about this place or about his upbringing that really deserve such a warm and fuzzy moniker.  Having a subpar experience when living in the academy is to be expected. And if Klaus shows up anyway, he’s at fault for whatever predicament he finds himself in. As he is for all things in his entire fucking charmed fucking life.

It’s not like he’s _surprised_ that his “training” had taken a turn toward the painful, it always does, especially once he’s done something irritating, and dear old dad really was pissed at Klaus for holding out on him this time. Klaus is pissed at himself too, because he’d put having a roof over his head as more important than ensuring that dad didn’t find a way to exploit his powers, which had a lot of potential to be a pretty not good quite bad mistake. Not that he had known what would happen, he couldn’t have known, but, still.

It’s half-past high time to be gone. He’s leaving, right now. Or he might not get the chance.

That’s maybe a dramatic way to think about it. The image in his head is definitely over-the-top, of dad getting Luther to bundle Klaus up like a football and punt him into some inescapable corner of this evil lair. Klaus has never seen it, but he’d be shocked (ha) if Reg doesn’t have a dungeon somewhere in here, maybe under the butcher shop, that seems fitting. He doesn’t want to find out for sure, is the thing.

He’s just planning on doing a quick sweep of the place, gather up whatever goodies he has stashed around, because this really has to be the last time, he really can’t come back here, can’t and won’t, not after _that,_ not when daddy dearest is around. 

He’s brought to a literal crashing halt when he careens down the main staircase and into a brother he didn’t expect to see here. “Diego! You’ve done it again, my white knight, always coming to rescue me.” 

Distracted by helping to steady Klaus on his abruptly stopped bare feet, Diego accidentally lets out a pleased, “Really?” before he de-puffs his chest and coaches his face back into its new normal, an expression that is probably meant to make him look tough and grown-up. Since Klaus has not only walked in on this nerd throwing grapes across the kitchen to boomerang back into his mouth, but then cheerfully bet him he couldn’t do it with a bigger fruit and watched him use his superpowers to chuck an entire fucking apple right into his own teeth, well, Klaus is probably not ever going to be able to ascribe any level of sage maturity to his number two.

“What do you need rescuing from now?” he asks, bringing Klaus out of one of his most sepia-toned of memories. 

“Just got to get out of here.” He didn’t mean for it to sound so desperate and final, to Diego or to anyone else who might be listening in. He shrugs. “For a bit.” Maybe he’s paranoid, but Klaus does not wants to say anything that marks him out as an obvious flight risk. Not now, now that dad might actually care about him leaving. “Get some air.” About Number Four leaving, anyway.

Shit, he can still feel the snap, crackle and pop of it, coursing itchy and warm beneath his skin. He rubs the back of his neck and up into his messy hair.

“Care for a stroll? You can be my brawny chaperone.” He flutters his eyes at his brother, who rolls his own, like he’s supposed to. Klaus doesn’t remember putting his shoes in the rack by the door, but there they are, and his coat, too. There’s enough stuffed in that garment that he could leave the rest, in the house, if Diego will drive him. He can come back, later, when he’s sure that Reggie isn’t home, if he can get a ride to the other side of the city, right now.

“I think you can handle yourself,” Diego says, and it sounds like a ‘no,’ but he’s fingering his keys and waiting for him to yank his shoes on so Klaus knows better.

“Not me, I’m too pretty. I’m much more of a damsel in distress.” Klaus cups his face in his hands, framing a cherubic smile for a beat before bounding to his feet.

“You know, that’s your problem.” Diego looks far too serious and thoughtful for where Klaus needs to be right now. 

“My beauty is my strongest asset! And the implication that I have only one problem is incredibly misinformed.”

“Yeah, that’s not what I meant, I’m talking about - ”

Yes, yes, he needs to get out of here yesterday, but - “Ah ah ah, wait a mo. What’s not what you meant?” Now Diego’s looking confused, and that’s fair, maybe, but Klaus _needs_ this before he’s going anywhere. He scratches at his chin and looks up to the ceiling like he’s pondering just so hard. “What exactly is this thing about me that you’ve just implicitly agreed is a true fact? My brain, I’m so addlepated, you know how it can be. So, you aren’t talking about it, but I am - what was it?”

Diego is staring at him with the same resigned expression as he wore all those times after The Great Apple Incident of the New Millenia, when Klaus would suggest with nothing more than pure guileless curiosity that maybe Diego could test his boomeranging abilities with, say, those raw eggs, or that little rat Vanya found out in the courtyard, or these gold bars (they spent a preposterous amount of time in some stupidly cartoonish vaults in their youth). He’d milked it for ages; it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, the _look_ on Diego’s _face_ for that split second when the apple had made its curve and he’d _realized_. Honestly, Klaus didn’t even see the impact because he was already crying from laughing so hard.

Basically, if anyone knows how long Klaus can stay committed to a dumb joke, it’s Diego, so he does the practical adult thing and says, “You are very pretty, Klaus.” 

The ‘very’ is an unexpected touch! He cackles, and preens, and suddenly immediately violently wants to collapse asleep, because now that it’s happened, he’s realizes it’s the first real laughter he’s had in… Well, what’s so exhausting is that he literally cannot remember.

Definitely before Reg took an interest, before Luther went and narced on him, twice, before his time at Big Eddie’s place. Funny how reliving childhood traumas doesn’t actually lead to the most fertile comedic ground. Or rather, deeply unfunny, which is the whole, of course, problem.

Obviously, Eddie hadn’t known what kinds of memories he was dredging up by keeping him down in that hellhole basement, but Klaus is pretty sure that he would find it a pleasant side effect. A perk. Eddie was a grade-A asshole with a mean streak and such cripplingly intense insecurities that his response to perceived rejection was murder. As the old saying goes, they can’t leave you if they are buried in multiple uneven pieces underneath your porch.

Klaus never got close enough to Eddie to cultivate any feeling as strong as rejection, which is why the whole thing was so cosmically stupid. A person who hooks up with you, one time, for the sole purpose of scoring some oxy, cannot be a person that you get mad at for “cheating on you.” Klaus hadn’t even stuck around afterwards because it hadn’t taken longer than a quickie for him to recognize that Big Eddie was a bastard, and not in the way that Klaus could enjoy. 

He couldn’t be mad with Harriet - Harriet? Was it Harriet? Or Hannah? Actually maybe Candace - for bringing him by Big Eddie’s months after Klaus and Eddie had made each other’s brief acquaintance; she just thought she was sharing a source, she hadn’t known what she was getting Klaus into. It’s annoying when there isn’t really anyone to blame. 

There isn’t, usually.

Just himself.

Who is also pretty annoying.

“I was talking about how you - you don’t believe in yourself,” says Diego, and Klaus blinks and tries to remember what in the holy hell they are even talking about. “But you should. You know, what you did back there - ”

That’s right, Diego’s trying to convince him of his self-worth, right now. He’s trying to attribute heroic deeds to Klaus, right now, in their father’s extensively surveilled house. Not even a full half hour after whatever _that_ was that had happened in that lab had, you know, happened.

The thing is that Klaus has spent years living in fear of the day when Sir Reginald would find a reason to be invested in Number Four again, and in the past 30 minutes, Klaus might have just unwillingly handed him such a reason. So he very much needs Diego to stop talking about anything to do with day-saving and get immediately out of here.

“Where better to start learning self-love than under Sir Hargreeves’ famously encouraging and _watchful_ tutelage, right?” Klaus puts a slight emphasis on the vitally important word in that sentence, and luckily Diego gets it, nodding and giving in to Klaus pushing him out the front door.

It’s overcast, not zippadeedoodah bright blue skies or anything, but it is early afternoon outside, which feels like a surprise. Maybe it’s just how dark it always is in that house, like Reginald has a vested interested in the thriving longevity of the heavy damask curtain industry, or maybe it’s just that usually when Klaus makes a hasty exit from somewhere, it’s the middle of the night. He lets his eyes drift closed as the gentle breeze ruffles his hair, and breathes the air in deep. One more win - one more close call that he’s managed to scoot his way out of. It’d be nice if he weren’t so familiar with this experience, but he’s not ungrateful; he’ll gladly take as many more close calls as he can get before the one that finally keeps him from being able to see the sky.

“You look, uh, better,” Diego says, which is sort of a surprise, considering what the past two weeks have been like. The past hour. But he clearly couldn’t bring himself to say Klaus looked ‘good’ and that at least rings true. 

“Maybe Mom’s cooking can work miracles.” That probably is the answer, too. Maybe he gained back a few pounds, filled in some of the space between his ribs. It had to be that, because apart from the meals, Big Eddie’s and the academy were not so unalike.

Luther hadn’t let him just crash, of course not, not loyal Number One. He’d found Klaus, who had been trying to casually make his way up to one of those unfinished attic rooms upstairs, where he really would have been bothering absolutely no one. Hopefully, in the future, Luther could look back on all the bother Klaus had been responsible for these past days and sensibly look the other way. Not that Klaus is going back. Mom’s making chicken soup tonight and he’s missing out. Will keep on missing out, until his old man kicks the bucket, if that’s even a thing he’s human enough to do.

“Can you not be your absolute worst self for once, please, Luther?” Klaus had pleaded, clearly not his best work but he was pretty, you know, tired. Can’t always win. Pretty much can never win, if he’s up against Number One. “I just need a place to sleep, man. Just for a few days.”

“It’s his house.”

“Only for one day. One hour, then!”

“Sleep as long as you like,” Luther had said, superiority smirk audible in his words. “I’m still telling dad.”

And that of course wasn’t a great option, but, his normal options just were not _options_ right then. So there you go, staying at the family abode for a while.

Dad of course had stared him down, made Klaus wait while he silently judged him, and this one at least Klaus had pretty much aced. Passed, anyway. Solid C+. He’d stood there with his hands clasped behind his back like a good little child soldier and kept his face about as blank as he could get it, kept the laughter on the inside. Mostly.

“Why should I bother with you, Number Four?” he’d said in that demanding way of his. Ah, the childhood memories. And maybe he should get bumped up to a B, because he hadn’t even laughed at that. What a ludicrous question, how ridiculous a situation, standing in a mansion the size of a city block, a son having to convince his father not to put him back out on the streets.

“You’re flighty. It’ll be less than two weeks of testing before you’ll decide to leave again, the way you always do. I can’t get you to stay long enough to conduct any useful research.”

So a C- is what he should get actually, because he couldn’t help but say, “You’re an accomplished man, pops, don’t sell yourself short! I’m sure you could treat me like a human being for at least three weeks, if you would only apply yourself.” He’d grinned sweetly, and Reg had glowered, but he’d come out of it with the sweet deal of getting to sleep in his own bed with the two conditions that, one, he ‘take his work seriously,’ which Klaus took to mean ‘sit there while Reggie did his experiments and do his best to show absolutely no reaction,’ which had been his ‘taking the training very seriously’ method for years now, and two, there were to be ‘absolutely no drugs,’ which Klaus mentally amended to ‘no drugs anywhere the cameras would see them.’ Not a bad deal, all in all.

But it had been, actually, kind of not good.

Not good enough that Klaus had actually found himself thinking back fondly on Eddie, that nutcase. He’d expressed as much to Ben, not in the lab, obviously, because screw dad, and because who knows how dad would screw Ben if he found a way to pin him down. He would chat with Ben in his room or the halls, though. Watch those security tapes and wonder, old man.

“He was going to kill you,” Ben had told him in his flat, no-nonsense way. Ben is always delivering things ‘no-nonsense,’ always intends for things to be no-nonsense, but somehow, when the only person he ever talks to is Klaus, there usually manages to be at least some nonsense. 

“No! No, we don’t know that, I don’t think he would have - I don’t think so,” Klaus had shrugged it off. “He liked me.”

“Yeah, he liked you so much he wanted to keep you forever.”

“Well, when you think about it like that, it’s kind of romantic, isn’t it?”

“Klaus.” Ben stopped walking, spoke slow and clear like he was talking to a child. It’s not Klaus’ favorite look on him. Not that Ben has a terribly varied selection. “If you think about it, it’s actually really not. I need for you to agree with me on this one.”

Which, okay, yeah, Klaus is a dumbass and a junkie and a whore and will accept pretty much any derogatory term you throw at him because, yeah, he deserves ‘em. But you can’t say he isn’t, incontrovertibly, a survivor. Time and time again, sometimes more than he’d like. So he doesn’t think his flippancy here warranted this level of intensity, but that’s No-Nonsense Ben for you.

“You are severely underestimating my ability to talk my way out of a bad situation.”

Apparently admitting it was ‘a bad situation’ was good enough because Ben was willing to move on. “Because it doesn’t exist.”

“What about that police guy?” Klaus had protested. “I got him to let me go.”

“You weren’t using your mouth to talk to him.”

“Well, that’s a skill, too,” he’d grinned. And ain’t that the truth. 

For the record, Klaus is much happier to hone that ability than what his papá wants him to practice. He may not always be entirely psyched about all the circumstances of it, not in every instance, but at least this is a talent he _chose_ to develop. At least it actually makes people happy when he uses it, and there could maybe even be a day when he’ll have someone specific he’ll be really happy to share it with. Plus, he doesn’t have to be locked up or electrocuted or whatever to be good at it, and yeah, call him crazy, but he prefers that.

“Hey, you drove here, right?” Klaus asks, and yep, there’s Diego’s boxy old car, parked in a messy skid like his rebellion against dad includes a rebellion against straight lines. Klaus makes a beeline to the thing.

“Not just looking for fresh air, then.”

“I bet the interior of your car cruising down the glorious rue de la liberté has plenty of sublimely fresh air,” Klaus says, yanking on the still locked passenger door handle. He is so close to getting the hell out of here. “Open your fucking car door, Diego.”

“Now I _know_ you don’t kiss our mother with that mouth.” Diego pauses, holding the keys up in his hand, and he’s just messing with him, Klaus knows that, but now that he’s grasping onto his ticket out of here, it’s setting in just how desperate he is to leave.

“Our mother is a robot who won’t hesitate to drag a screaming me right back into that place by my enviable hair if dad programs her to, so please just let’s get out of here, please.” He’s tugging on the handle compulsively.

“Okay, alright.” Diego puts his palms up in truce, then unlocks the car, and it’s only once Klaus has collapsed into the seat that he remembers that metal is pretty conductive and he’s lucky the energy had bled out of him enough that he doesn’t become responsible for the death of another brother. Not yet.

The car pulls out onto the road, and Klaus realizes that his hands are shaking, and he doesn’t know if that’s from the heady overload of adrenaline and relief or, you know, the electricity. He pulls his coat tight around him to give them something to do.

He can feel Diego’s curious eyes on him, and he knows he’s going to ask, ask for something that Klaus doesn’t want to talk about, and Klaus doesn’t want to lie. He speaks first, hopefully to keep things from getting too specific. Because if he tells the truth about what just happened, Diego is either going to lose it and turn right back around to start a fight, or - or he won’t. Won’t care, won’t believe, whatever. Klaus can’t figure which would make him feel worse, but he can’t handle either right now. So instead he puts laughter into his words and turns it all into a joke. “Can you believe Dad’s hospitality was starting to wear a little thin?”

Diego shakes his head. “Don’t know why you keep going back to stay there.”

This is emotional territory Klaus feels much more comfortable traversing. ‘Klaus is an annoying dumbass who makes idiotic, self-destructive choices for no reason.’ Been there before. Familiar, if frustrating, ground.

“Turns out being homeless also gets old sometimes.”

Diego shoots him another close look that Klaus pretends not to notice, then he yanks the wheel and cuts across two lanes of traffic. Driving with Diego, always exciting.

“You don’t have to be homeless, you know,” Diego tells him and Klaus can’t help the chortle that inspires. “I’ve got a job so I can have a place, my own place. You could, too, bro.”

At least Diego doesn’t say out loud the ‘if you would just apply yourself’ that is clearly the follow-up to that statement. They were raised by the same authoritarian bastard, after all. 

“Shockingly,” and that word isn’t funny, it’s _not_ , but Klaus laughs anyway, “there’s actually not a lot of job opportunities for a homeless, crazy drug addict without even a high school diploma to his name - or to his Number, I mean. Let me know when I stop blowing your mind with all of this.” It’s like they live in completely different worlds. Actually, they kind of do.

Klaus has always been separate from everyone else, perched on the in-between the way he is. Although Ben is sort of a part of that now, so he’s not quite as alone as he was in his younger days, but also, and not to make things all about Klaus, and obviously not that he’s holding anything against _Ben_ for it, or against anyone, really, it’s not a ‘blame’ situation, it’s just how it is, but. Ben dying did also do a heck of a lot to separate Klaus even more from the rest of his siblings. Having Ben still be there, but just with him. Knowing what dad did to him, but being the only one.

It meant that he knew better, though, even after he’d finally given in to Ben’s cajoling and tried again to tell Luther the other day. It was so hard to figure out where to start. The first time hadn’t gone over well. Obviously. He wouldn’t be trying to have this conversation again if the first time had been a success. Of course, the end result would still be the same, Luther was still going to think Klaus was the worst kind of liar and nothing would change, so in that sense it also didn’t really matter where he started from.

Luther had already been losing patience just from being dragged up to that dingy attic room, but it was out of reach of Dad’s cameras. Given how much of the of the ‘training’ dad had been putting him through this time seemed oriented around trying to make Klaus summon Ben, and how Klaus had obstinately ho-hummed and offered up over-earnest variants of, “I wish I could, pops, really I do, I’d give anything to see my sweet, darling, rotted corpse of brother again, but it just won’t happen.” Well. If Reggie found out how utterly constant a companion Ben was, Klaus had known he’d be furious. He hadn’t known the specifics of how he would be made to feel that fury, not then, but at least he’d gone in with his eyes open.

Because, no question - Luther was absolutely going to tell on him.

“This place is really falling apart, isn’t it,” Klaus had said, scuffing his foot on the floor. “I know it was never finished, but still. Maybe you should get out of here, go out west, visit Allison, find a place with less…” All of the things that Klaus hated about it here were not reasons that would resonate with Luther, which was sort of the whole problem. “Dust,” he finished lamely.

“What is this about, Klaus?”

Couldn’t it have just been about how the west coast was a nice place to live? Couldn’t it have been that easy? 

“You have to tell him,” Ben said. “He’s the only one still here. He won’t leave unless you tell him.”

Klaus didn’t think he’d leave anyway, no matter what Klaus told him. But this wasn’t about what Klaus thought. “It’s about Ben.” He stared at exposed rafters up in the corner as he plowed ahead because if he was looking at Luther’s face he wouldn’t be able to say, “About how Ben died.”

“You mean because of you?” Luther said, and Ben said, “Not your fault,” and Klaus said, “Yeah,” to both of them, not fully agreeing with either. 

“You mean the part where you lied to us?”

“Yeah.” And it sucked. It was so stupid and pointless because Luther wasn’t going to believe him anyway and Klaus really didn’t want to do this. Ben really needed him to do this. “But not the first time.”

Luther had opened his mouth to speak but he was paused now, waiting for Klaus to make that make more sense. 

He tried. “I lied to you all, about seeing Ben, but not the first time. I mean, I could - I can - see him. The part where I lied was after, I lied when I said I couldn’t.” He winced because he’d been the one to say it and he still couldn’t make much sense of that rambled mess. Ben was staring at him with that classic ghost-Ben expression, cultivated over years of bearing witness to Klaus’ never-ending string of bad decisions, a true connoisseur’s blend of exasperated distaste and crestfallen resignation. Clearly he was also impressed by Klaus’ skills as a wordsmith.

Luther somehow caught on, though. “Why would you do that? Why would you lie to us about that?” He looked like his brain was going to explode, which could have meant he was leaning towards believing Klaus just as much as the opposite. 50/50 shot. But his chances were about to tank.

“Dad. Was the one I was lying to.” And there it went. The first word out of Klaus’ mouth and Luther’s face had immediately darkened, and it was over, Klaus knew it was, but he kept going, kept trying, his voice shrill. “You don’t know what he did, that’s what I’m trying to tell you now! He did stuff, weird messed-up science stuff, to try to save Ben’s life, but it made him worse, a lot worse, and now with you still here by yourself, Ben’s worried about you, he doesn’t want anything like that happening to you because you’re the only one still here with dad.”

“Ben said this.” Luther’s affect was flat.

“Yes.” He poured as much sincerity as he could into the word, but he got too good at faking too long ago; Klaus isn’t actually sure what sincerity sounds like from him anymore.

“Ben’s here now?”

The question that tripped him up the last time. Dad wasn’t in the attic with them now, but Klaus had bet that he’d hear about it anyway, and guess who had been right. He’d looked to Ben, checking for confirmation that they were really doing this, that they’d be blowing past their last shot at backing down and cruising into full commitment to the truth. Klaus isn’t a big fan of fully committing to anything, and definitely not the truth, but Ben nodded at him, with his big dumb hopeful encouraging face. Klaus sighed. “Yeah, he’s here.”

“And Ben is the one,” Luther stepped in closer, and Klaus started noticing how low the ceiling in the attic was, it wasn’t a terribly spacious room, actually, “who wants me to leave the academy, to abandon the mission and Dad and everything he’s done for us. Ben wants me to run off and, what, waste away my life doing whatever it is that you do?”

Klaus couldn’t help how he squirmed. “I mean, that last part, neither of us said - ”

“Us,” Luther spat. The way Klaus’ gaze darted over to Ben made him even angrier. “There’s nothing you won’t do, is there?” He shouldered past Klaus as punctuation.

“For what?” Klaus shot at his brother’s back as he stormed out, not expecting an answer. “What _reason_ would I have for - ” He kicked the floor, because he didn’t have anything to say that would matter. He pressed his knuckles into his eyes and told Ben, “I’m sorry. I tried.”

Ben said, “Yeah,” in the same way Klaus had been saying that word for the whole conversation. Agreement on the surface only. He’d had to shove down his annoyance with Ben, because he had, repeatedly, told him it would go this way. Klaus is an idiot, but even he had known that Luther wasn’t going to to listen to him about this, because of course he absolutely wouldn’t, but Ben had not believed him either, and he’d insisted.

Klaus has had a lot of practice telling ghosts who try bullying him into passing along messages exactly where they can fuck right off to, but it’s hard to say no when the ghost is your brother and it’s your fault he’s dead.

Fault is a sticky thing, Klaus knows that. Their father has a share of it, because he never should have sent a kid who was that high to a gunfight. Or a kid to a gunfight at all, if you want to get down right down to it. There’s some space for chicken-or-egging about how Ben might have survived his wounds if it weren’t for Sir Reginald’s experimental methods to help him survive his wounds, but then, those wounds wouldn’t have been there at all if Klaus hadn’t been there at all and it doesn’t really matter. He and Reg can share it. That’s what he means about fault being sticky - someone else can get their hand in there and it’ll spread around, but that doesn’t clean it off you.

And, speaking of Ben, he’s still not back yet. Nearly long enough for it to be concerning. If he and Reggie had somehow teamed up yet again and managed to double-kill Ben, be the cause of the destruction of ghostly Ben, too… He doesn’t really have an appropriate follow-up. Klaus isn’t a doer. But also it’s such an unacceptable option that Klaus doesn’t want to give fate or irony or whatever the ammunition, to call his bluff or prove him wrong or - he’ll just stop thinking about it.

Not that Klaus has ever been too good at controlling his thoughts. Or anything else. 

Eh, control is overrated. People who are too worked up about control are, on the whole, not people Klaus enjoys spending time with. He tries to imagine a version of himself that could say with a straight-face, ‘I have a plan. I am in control,’ and cracks himself up. Will never happen. What a douche. Klaus doesn’t even have a straight face.

Diego swerves and swears because apparently he’s been watching Klaus instead of the road. Watching Klaus be much too reserved for his normal self and then giggling out of nowhere, pressed up against the passenger window. A window, he now notices, that’s breezing past the alleyway where he’d often met one of his more reputable dealers before the guy got pinched - it’s always the good ones that are gone too soon. And they’re passing that bodega Klaus was banned from by tetchy owner, the but the third-shift girls always welcome him in, and some nights when the weather is particularly tempestuous, he’ll spend hours perched on the counter judging tabloid fashion with them. These are not the views he’d expected.

“This is,” Klaus is hesitant to fully commit and call it ‘his side’ considering that what he means, essentially, is ‘crime-ridden,’ “not your usual side of town.” Not that Diego lives in a ritzy neighborhood or anything, but you could call it up-and-coming. Where they are now, in Klaus’ old familiar haunts, pardon the pun, this is a part of town that never even made it to up-and-coming before it took a never-ending nosedive into full sketchsville. “If you’re planning to take me directly to my favorite chemist, I appreciate it, I really do, but I can’t exactly get a top off if I roll up with a celebrated officer of the law.”

“There’s not one part of that sentence that’s right,” Diego grumbles, and there’s an edge in his tone, but Klaus can either try to figure out what Diego means or what Diego’s feeling, but not both. 

Which reminds him, actually, there’s some self-care he’s been neglecting that could give him a little more brain juice. He pats at his coat, trying to remember his inventory, and then belatedly remembers the ‘officer of the law’ thing. Unless, option one of figuring things out: what Diego means is something about not being a lawman. Klaus tries to translate his previous sentence to opposite, ‘Diego’s not planning to not take Klaus…’ This is dumb. He gives up. “Um. What?”

“They’re looking for you, you know.” 

That doesn’t clear anything up. Does it? “I don’t know what that means.”

“The police. They’ve got him locked up, but they want to get you to testify, about - ”

“Right.” Klaus knows what Diego’s talking about now. And he doesn’t really want to know how Diego would describe the situation he’d found at Big Eddie’s. There were a couple reasons why Klaus’d hopped the chain-link fence out of his backyard that day, and an extreme disinterest in hashing out the details with his brother was one of them. 

There was also the one about how the cops were mostly otherwise engaged, but he didn’t want to push his luck by trying to stroll through the front entrance where more detectives would almost certainly be arriving in droves. Especially not after helping himself to a sampling of Eddie’s wares, although not nearly as much as was in the house, and not what his time was usually worth, if Ben’s timeline was to be believed. But he’d been in a bit of a hurry to get out of there. And he hadn’t been in the mood for more of Big Eddie’s sweet nothings just then. 

Not that it was anything he hadn’t heard before, the kind of stuff he’d been hearing since he was - well, since forever, really, because, obviously, in death as in life, some people are fucking perverts, although the ratio does seem unevenly bent. Either folks don’t hide their nasty so much when it’s only a kid around to hear it, or it’s the sick assholes who are more likely to stick around haunting people. Both, probably. But, yeah, none of his living siblings ever had to overhear any of it. And, no matter what they said, the spirits could never _touch_ him.

So Klaus had elected to clamber inelegantly over the back fence, and some combination of the exertion and spending however long without, you know, eating or walking or standing up made him almost black out when he hit the ground, and it had still been a better pick than risking an interaction with any number of people out in the front yard. 

Not to be dramatic, but if Diego tries to convince him to give testimony, Klaus is going to throw himself out of this car.

“Is that why you came to the academy, then? To come collect me?” 

“I came to see Mom. I didn’t think your stupid ass would even be there.”

“She was making chicken soup tonight,” Klaus says mournfully. It’s his favorite. He would have left right after talking to Luther, but he had figured he could hold out for another day and get some of Mom’s chicken soup. Oh well.

“I wanted to talk to her about some stuff I’ve been thinking about,” Diego says, in a reluctant way, like he thinks he’s revealing deep dark secrets and not just describing the basic components of literally every conversation. 

There’s a beat where that tantalizing bit of low-down tawdry gossip somehow does not, for reasons that are truly unknowable, spark up a vibrant discussion. “Okay,” Klaus says.

“About all of this with the police.” Diego scrapes a low sound out of his throat, a long-suffering sigh probably, preparation for a lecture, and Klaus grips the door handle, because that’s how little he is kidding about this. “Be good for you to lay low, for a while.”

The electricity really did fry his brain. Or the years of drug use finally did.

“You’re saying - _you’re_ saying - what are you saying?”

Diego mutters it in the same serious, disappointed tone he’ll use when apologizing to mom, usually on behalf of his siblings. For breaking rules that Klaus usually doesn’t think are worth following, for the record, so, no, he’s certainly not going to get apologetic about it. “The police aren’t - the captain and the DA are - turns out they aren’t so trustworthy after all.”

His initial laughter is unbidden, but it really is just so precious. Sweet, apple-yeeting Number Two, realizing for the first time that the justice system might maybe be teensy bit corrupt. Baby’s First Reality Check.

But that’s shitty. Such a shitty, shitty response, as if Diego’s life hasn’t been his own particular parade of horrors, and as if someone losing their faith in something is in any way funny. It’s not. It fucking sucks. It’s a sucker punch that hits you twice - first you get to deal with whatever it was they did to you that finally let you see them clearly, and then you get to know that, ultimately, you deserved it. The closer you are, the closer that you stupidly, trustingly, disgracefully, pathetically let yourself be, the harder the blow lands. It’s your fucking fault. It’s not funny, and you don’t need your most worthless brother condescending to you about it.

Maybe that’s part of why Luther wouldn’t listen, about Ben. Because the cost was too high. He _couldn’t_ listen, or it was his entire life ripped up in front of him. His hero unmasked, his belief system toppled, from a single truth. It’s way easier for it to just be a lie, and easy to doubt when hearing it from someone like Klaus. Klaus doesn’t trust half the things he hears from himself, either; it’s understandable, it’s forgivable, really.

He wonders if Diego would listen now. He’s certainly the brother more likely to than _Luther,_ for christ’s sake, and tales of Sir Reginald’s dastardly deeds are not going to be brain-breaking revelations for Number Two.

Ben had saved Klaus, on a stupid pointless mission, because who needs kids to stop a robbery anyway? The police _exist_ , and honestly, it’s not like thievery is too terrible of a crime, especially not stealing from assholes who are already plenty rich enough and have like, insurance and stuff. That was probably what Klaus was distracted thinking about, that and how he could snag some valuables himself since he’d already gone through the trouble of coming all the way out here, when Ben had leapt into the line of fire and saved his life. Another stupid pointless mission, really, protecting a useless thing on behalf of an ungrateful asshole who didn’t really need to hang on to it anyway. But he had. 

And he’d gotten better. Quickly, too quickly. ‘Sir Reginald’s Genuine Original Formula to Cure What Ails You Snake Oil’ too quickly. Not that any of them had been wary, at the time. Klaus was old enough then, knew enough of what his father was capable of, that he could have been more skeptical, but he’d been such a mess. 

Seeing his brother, looking like that, bleeding out, because of him, because Ben was a real actual hero of a person who wouldn’t hesitate to save lives even when it was just Klaus, even when Klaus only needed saving because he was such a weak selfish coward, because he was ruining himself and not caring about how he was ruining anyone else who stood close enough - the only way he knew how to deal with seeing that was to numb it away, but that was what got Ben laid up on an infirmary table in the first place. There’d been lots of attempts at getting immediately, repentantly, symbolically clean, until he couldn’t take it anymore, so he’d take a couple somethings until he couldn’t handle that guilt anymore either, and he’d force his fingers down his throat, retch and heave as if the acid coming up was a purifying agent that could scour his insides raw and new, but it wasn’t, he was sixteen and he knew better, because he had already polluted himself too deeply, even at sixteen he was already unsalvageable. 

So he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth when Ben quickly got better, and he didn’t want to draw a worried connection when, a few days later, Ben quickly got sick. So violently sick they couldn’t even visit him in the infirmary, because he got locked away in that goddamn private lab of Reginald’s none of the rest of them had ever seen the inside of (not then, anyway. Klaus has grown very familiar with it now). And when Ben came back, looking wan and terrible in the early morning light, but clearly on the mend since he was back and standing on his own two feet in Klaus’ bedroom, Klaus had been so grateful that he hadn’t looked hard enough at that, either.

What he’d done instead was bound down to the kitchen, giddy with relief, and told his siblings to lighten up, because hadn’t they heard the news? And he’d been socked in the face so hard he’d smacked his head backwards into the wall, because they _had_ heard the news, and the news was that Ben had died, and Klaus watched Diego storm to the far side of the room right through Ben’s shrugging body as he said in a voice that now only Klaus could hear, “I didn’t know how to tell you.” 

Klaus thinks it was the shock that made him pass out, but when he came to, Luther shouted at him for trying to make this all about himself, by overreacting to head trauma, apparently. The Klaus of now wouldn’t even bother getting into that line of argument, but back then, he’d shouted right back, until he made himself dizzy. Although, maybe that could have been the head trauma, too.

But he’d shouted back, that he was sorry and he didn’t mean to get it wrong but that Ben was still here, that he was still around, that if they would just _listen_ to him, they didn’t have to lose another member of their family, not again. And they would have listened. They were willing to trust him. Luther was the final hold-out, but the others were talking him around and he was almost there, because of course, it’s not so hard to let yourself believe something that you want to be true.

Then along came Dad. “What is the meaning of this?”

Luther told him, “Ben is here. Klaus can see him.” 

“Is this true, Number Four?”

“I - ” His throat tightened up to hang onto his words. It was unexpected and gratifying to have Luther support him, as though his word was fact, and the idea of somehow finally being useful made something flutter in his stomach. But ‘useful’ was a dangerous thing to be, in large part because it was a _thing_ , and back at that age, he had wanted so achingly much to be a person. 

Ben was looking at dad with a face full of the same emotions Klaus typically felt when he looked at dad, and Reginald pulled out one of those damn notebooks of his, and not that anyone’s asking, but Klaus doesn’t think he would mind the mandated rehab therapy so much if it didn’t involve people in positions of authority jotting down who knows what little notes as they evaluate him. Reginald set in with his writing, not even bothering to look at him. “Where is Number Six?”

He’d been the only one not staring at Klaus. Each of his siblings were focused on him with equal intensity, although the flavor of the attention varied. Allison the most skeptical, Diego hopeful but clearly in spite of himself, Ben in anxious terror.

It broke slowly, like dawn light misting through his throbbing head. It was a fresh lesson back then, but he had learned that no matter how much that particular spot behind his ribs told him otherwise, attention from his father was never a good thing. He didn’t know how or what or even if it was possible for Ben to ‘feel’ now, but Klaus‘ feelings were that if Reg got his claws in, he would never let go, and one thing that Ben would therefore unequivocally _not_ be feeling was the eternal peace or whatever that he more than deserved. 

From the drained look on his face, Ben seemed to be thinking the same thing - although, the blood-loss-paleness could have had other explanations. 

“Where exactly is the spirit in this room?” Reginald looked up from his notes to fix Klaus with a sharp stare. 

Shaking his head, ‘the spirit’ whispered, “Don’t let him get me.”

Because as long as Klaus was around, and as long as their dad could control Klaus, he could continue to control all of them. The Umbrella Academy, children used as tools for their tyrannical father for even longer than their entire lives. So when dad snapped at him, “Answer me, Number Four! Is Number Six here?” Klaus hung his head so he wouldn’t have to look at his expectant, trusting, desperately grieving siblings, and he said, “No. No, he’s not here. I can’t see him.”

He looked up too fast, always impatient, so he got to watch their faces turn anyway. He hasn’t gotten to see them turn back yet. He’s not holding his breath.

They’d figured that Klaus had been ‘joking.’ He knows that his sense of humor is dark and idiosyncratic, but he thinks this was a pretty uncharitable interpretation. He can’t honestly blame any of them for it, though. He’d had to shrug and go along with the explanation because he couldn’t really come up with anything else better, and he couldn’t actually mention the truth anywhere that Reginald’s top notch security system could pick it up. It wasn’t supposed to be a whole big secret lie, not from them, but without knowing what Reggie might be able to do both him and Ben if he thought he could get something out of it, Klaus had needed to keep his mouth shut.

Or the opposite of that, really. He ramped up the volume on the crazy and the nonsense and the drugs to make sure that daddy dearest wouldn’t take too special an interest in listening to any of it, so that even if he did tune in, it would be too much work to untangle the truth of it from the rest of the obnoxious slurry. Sometimes he wishes it hadn’t worked so well on, you know, everyone, but again, pros and cons.

But yeah, ever since then, Klaus is the one who made a mockery of their grief about their brother’s death, which is pretty cool, and why none of them were going to listen to him about Ben, or anything else for that matter, ever again.

Which is all to say, the idea that Klaus had a role to play in helping Diego reach his newest realization - it’s a first, and it fills him with a strange and maybe not entirely bad feeling that might be responsibility. He feels a little ridiculous as he does it, but he sits a little taller in the passenger seat. 

Then Diego continues, “They wanted me to _lie_ , about how we found the evidence.”

And Klaus slouches back down, because here’s Diego all worked up over the abstract moralistic ideals of Truth and Justice, when the very day in question, Klaus’d had to blow a handsy policeman and the guy had thrown in some yet-to-be-logged evidence for his trouble and his silence, so. He’s too tired to be concerned about posture.

“Uncovering corruption in the local police force, wow. Maybe you should forget about cop class and become an intrepid young reporter instead.” Too tired to be concerned for very long about not being a patronizing little shit, too. 

Although, for what it’s worth, as deadpan as his comment is, he’s not kidding about the cop thing. Klaus would never tell Diego, obviously, because he doesn’t love getting stabbed, but sometimes the staff at rehab kind of remind him of his tough love brother. Diego is hotheaded, and he’s always telling Klaus off about something or other, but he also always gives Klaus a ride, and he’ll roll his eyes but he doesn’t usually tell Klaus to stop talking, and Klaus just thinks he might be good at something quieter than your typical action hero stuff.

“Yeah,” Diego agrees, which, what? Diego _agrees_? “Been thinking that law enforcement might not be the best way to help people. At least, not with the police.”

That could be a concerning sentiment. If Klaus were the kind of person to get concerned about people, like, circumventing the law or whatever, which, yeah. Not that much of a hypocrite. “Like, a private eye or something?”

“Yeah, something.” He stares ahead silently, like he’s in a movie and the conversation’s over because he said something cool and they’ll cut forward to a new scene. Or he could just be watching the road. He’s stoically not elaborating, is the thing.

The important part of it, as far as Klaus is concerned, doesn’t need too much more explanation. Diego’s not a cop, and Klaus has uppers in one of these pockets. Of course it’s when he pulls out the little blue pills that Diego quits his brooding and remembers that Klaus is in the car.

“Hey, come on, quit it, you don’t need that” he says, making the car drift towards the curb as he slaps at Klaus’ hands.

“Oh, you’re an expert, huh? Going to be a crime-stopping doctor?” If that’s not a TV show yet, it will be. 

“I don’t need to be a doctor or a cop to know that you shouldn’t do drugs, you idiot.”

“Rude.”

“Just, would you just listen to me, okay?” Diego says, and it works on him, because Klaus is a dumbass and that particular phrase works on him particularly well. “You can get clean, bro, and you can help people, too. The other day, at that house? You saved the day back there.”

“I didn’t save anything,” Klaus mumbles, but Diego keeps on as though he didn’t hear him.

“You didn’t have to follow red tape and rules to get in and do the right thing and help those people.”

“I didn’t - ”

“But you _did_ ,” Diego insists. “You changed those families’ lives. They would’ve never known what had happened. We could’ve walked out of that house and never found any of you.” The pronoun feels like an admission of something. It thickens the air in the car. Diego does his best to stumble on past it. “You could do that again, you could do more, if you’d just do your séance thing for real.” 

Klaus laughs, because he’s had years of practice, a lifetime’s worth, of honing that to be his knee-jerk reaction, and he’s not sure he wants to find out what his reaction might be otherwise. “Me, work for the police?”

“ _With_ the police. More like a consultant.”

“Like a magical consulting narc who’ll never be able to get high in this town again.”

Diego at least doesn’t say out loud that this is a bonus. “If you’re using your powers, you won’t need to get high.”

He laughs at that, too, but he’s suddenly swamped with wanting to cry, because Diego still believes that Klaus is doing anything by choice. Like he isn’t completely controlled by his fucking “superpower” at all times. He can pick between the ghosts or the drugs, but he doesn’t get any other options. Just like how he can pick between being used for his body or used for his powers with no door number three. Obviously, getting high is much more fun than having corpses screaming at him, so when he’s picking his poison, yeah, he’ll pick the actual poison, but that doesn’t mean he actually thinks that the ideal version of himself is cracked out all the time.

Diego thinks that the more Klaus sees the dead, the less high he’ll want to be. There’s a kind of humor in there, there is. He’s got to hang onto that.

“Police departments have worked with mediums before, and you’re the real deal, famous for being able to talk to the dead. You have way more credibility than most psychics have.”

_“‘Psychics,’_ oh my God, Diego.” That one is genuinely funny, but Klaus is ready to be done with this little reunion now. Luckily, the car pulls to a stop along a curb in a cramped neighborhood, the greying, slumping houses sitting close to the cracked sidewalk. This is Klaus’ kind of street. Maybe he is magic after all, getting his wish right on time, he jokes to himself, but then he sees the crime tape wrapped around the house they’re parked in front of.

His heart sinks. Sinks so fast it almost doesn’t hurt. Because this all makes a lot more sense, now.

“I want your help with something,” Diego says, as if it’s not already crystal fucking clear what he wants. Because it turns out that everyone, his dad and Big Eddie and even fucking Diego are not all that different from each other.

When he’d come into the lab that morning, really only a couple hours ago, Reg hadn’t even looked up from the machine he’d been fiddling away at. Pogo’d sat him down and stuck wires onto him, there in the same lab where Dad had fiddled around with his brother until he died.

Even on your average day, getting hooked up like a science project made Klaus feel like, you know, a science project, which was its own complicated cocktail of humiliation, submission, and confused anger that didn’t have the clearest target, but was in no small part aimed right at himself. He was mad at his dad too, because he always is, and, as much as he hates to admit it, he was scared, because again, when it comes to Dad that’s just how it always is. But then this time, today, being fairly certain that Reg knew he’d been seeing Ben and lying about it - the terror levels were skimming closer to childish hysteria than they had for a long while.

Not unfounded, it had turned out, when a zap thrummed through him and he’d learned that the ‘training’ this time was just going to be electrocution. Reginald had a fancy pen out over his notebook, and it’s science if you write things down, so what did Klaus have to complain about?

“Number One told me you passed along a message from Number Six.”

So Luther had tattled. Klaus was disappointed but not surprised. He'd known this was the likely outcome, and he knew that there was no point in lying about it. The only way Klaus could know about Reggie’s particular involvement in Ben’s death was from the ghost himself. “Yeah. Ben’s worried about Luther - about what you might do to him.”

“Excellent. Then you are able to speak with him,” his dad said, because, of course, _that_ was the important part of what Klaus had just said. “Is he here now?”

He flicked his eyes away from Ben, huddled over in the corner of the lab with his arms crossed. Ben hated it in here. Not that Klaus could blame him. He hated it in here, too, and he hadn’t died here yet. 

There was no way in hell that Klaus was going to let Reginald know that his brother was here. He could fess up about talking to Ben at other times, but if he admitted his powers worked in any way while dad was doing his testing, the testing would never stop. “No, there’s nothing.”

Reg nudged the dial, upping the current a little.

“Is this because you’re mad at me, dad? I feel like you’re mad at me.”

He bumped up the voltage again, but said, as if that wasn’t already a bald-faced admission, “We are testing a new method to help you to unlock your abilities, Number Four.”

“Right,” Klaus had said, a little breathless, “that’s the only reason.” Dad could call it an experiment as much as he wanted, but is torture one of those things where you can be like, ‘it isn’t this actually, but it sure does feels like it?’ Because if it felt like torture, well, wasn’t that the definition?

“Don’t be stupid,” Ben said, looking horrified and panicked over Reginald’s shoulder. “Don’t provoke him.”

Klaus was good at provoking, though. “I just think you’re a little mad that I talked to Ben and didn’t tell you about it.”

So of course the power turned up, because Klaus is stupid, but he was right. 

“We can continue until we achieve results. Tell me when you see any spirits.”

The certainty implied there wasn’t lost on Klaus, who was coming to realize exactly how trapped he was, that although his body was trembling, he couldn’t really move his limbs of his own accord. “You know, I don’t think Ben is going to show?” he said. “With that weak stomach of his. Gets squeamish about sadistic abuse, it reminds him too much of his childhood.”

There went the voltage crackling higher, and he swore, which got a reprimanding, “Language!” and a notch higher. He screwed his eyes up against it and got more for that, too. “You cannot see anything with your eyes closed, Number Four. Apply yourself!”

Right, that was all he had to do, just try harder. ‘Just try harder to stop your body’s natural physical reactions to pain.’ That made him laugh through his gritted teeth, and he used that to help wrench his eyes open. 

There were some new faces starting to appear in the edges of the room, like they were drawn to whatever was going on, which was a bad sign. His brain wasn’t at peak efficiency, for so many reasons, but tart, earthy terror was able to burst through the buzzing. If his mad scientist of a father had somehow stumbled onto something, that’d be the whole ballgame. If Reg believed that this would effect his powers in some way, it’d be Number Four: Electric Boogaloo on the daily.

“You’re making it worse,” Ben said, frowning down at Reginald’s hand poised to turn the dial. “He knows already, just tell him you can see me.”

“It’s not going to work.” Klaus wasn’t 100% sure who he’d meant the comment for, which was bad, very bad, it was a dangerous slippery bad place he was in, but it was hard enough to rally the coordination to pant the words out, much less know where they were going.

He closed his eyes against the next increase, so he didn’t see when Ben came to stand closer. When he ripped them open, squinting vision quavering and blurred like he was staring head-on into a vicious wind, he flinched from the unexpected closeness at his side. 

“Please, Klaus,” Ben begged, not seeming to get the part where giving in now would make it worse. Klaus shook his head at him, as much as he could manage, and was about to explain, and then the sluggish, overloaded synapses in his brain finally caught up enough to put a screeching halt to all the ways he was incriminating himself.

Too late. He was pretty sure it was too late. He still had to find out for certain, which was why his eyes scraped a path, slow and stuttering and guilty as sin, from Ben’s expression directly to Sir Reginald’s. And it _was_ too late. Dad knew.

“Do you see him?” He wasn’t genuinely asking. He knew the answer. It was a question of control.

Klaus wished he wasn’t shaking so bad, that he wasn’t visibly crumbling apart from pain and fear, that he could at least pretend he wasn’t a colossal failure, weakness made manifest in the form of a tarnished, useless screw-up. He was pinned under Reginald’s steady gaze and so rattled that he could hardly open his mouth. This was going to suck, this was going to suck, this was going to suck so so so much. Klaus lied, “Nope.”

He’d barely popped the ‘p’ when his dad had twisted the dial, hard, shooting up quite high quite fast, not gradual enough for Klaus to shift to accommodate the energy that was welling up beneath his skin like angry, scalding hot champagne. Klaus knows that doesn’t really make sense, and knows that he hadn’t been in control of any of his reactions at that point, and he knows that Ben reached out to comfort him, and it hadn’t been as ‘in vain’ as that gesture usually was and the room was swept with blinding blue light and then Ben was gone, all of the ghosts were gone, and it was just Klaus and his dad and thin smoke from a busted machine, sharing the silence from the shock of it all. He doesn’t know the hows and whys, though, and yeah, he still is unclear on even the _what_. 

He’d been lucky that he had been the first to pull himself together, and maybe that was thanks to Reginald, for granting him enough experience to grow accustomed to dragging himself forward even when he could barely stand. And then he’d crashed into Diego, let himself get taken in by the comforting safe aura of his older brother. Who now wants to use Klaus’ powers, too.

Fuck this. Fuck all of this. Fuck it right off the planet, he is so done. 

His fingers find the door handle again and he is out of there. At least the car is in park.

“Hey!” Diego says, scrambling out. “You have to quit trying to disappear on me.”

Klaus spins and points at his brother, and what that gesture is supposed to mean is a mystery even to himself. “I don’t _have_ to do _anything_ ,” he spits out, and turns back around. He’s not exactly sure of the street they’re on, but like he said, it’s his part of town, he’ll figure out where he’s going soon enough. Not that it really matters, he’s not the kind of guy who has a destination. “And I don’t have to ‘try.’”

He starts to stalk away, hears Diego catching up behind him, and it’s all too similar to the scene outside of Big Eddie’s, so he stops himself. Rather let everyone involved believe it’s his choice to stay and have this conversation and not because he was manhandled into it.

Again, most sincerely, fuck this.

“What do you want from me, Diego?” Of course, now that he’s asked, Diego holds his tongue, suddenly cagey about the whole thing, which irritates the hell out of him because, what, it’s only fun to use Klaus when he doesn’t know you’re about to blindside him with it? “Come on, use your words, Number Two. Chop-chop!”

And there it goes, that did the trick. Now they can be pissed off at each other together, like real brothers. Diego jabs his finger at the house that Klaus is making a point of not looking at. “Bad stuff happened in that place, Klaus.” There he goes again with that singularly descriptive phrase. “This asshole killed his parents and his kid and then himself, and we don’t know where his wife and their baby are. She has parents, too. The baby’s grandparents. They are desperate to find what is left of their family.” He turns his accusatory pointer finger to Klaus’ chest. “You can help them. Only you.”

Right, of course. Klaus is the person who can bring closure and healing and peace to her family, like he’d done with his own family after Ben died. Healed them all up and now they’re closer than ever, what a rousing success!

He really can’t help. His help - as much as everyone always thinks otherwise when they are demanding that he help them talk to their whoever whatever, in the end, no one is ever happy with his ‘help.’

“How many murdered people? Four, was it? Sounds like a real party.” He barrels on as Diego’s face twists. “I’m thrilled that you find me so useful Diego, truly, but I’m really not in the most sociable mood right now.”

“You’re such a selfish asshole,” he says, sounding a little astonished, like he hadn’t come to this understanding before.

“There you go, now you’re getting it. Congratulations.” Klaus sticks out his left palm, which he thinks is his GOODBYE hand. He doesn’t generally pay enough attention to them to remember which is which. He sneaks a glance at his other palm to confirm he’s making the point he means to.

“You got something better to go do?” Diego’s holding his arms stiff at his sides, like he’s actively restraining himself from grabbing onto him, and that makes Klaus feel soft and bruised in a way he doesn’t understand and can’t think about.

“You said Big Eddie’s locked up?” At Diego’s nod, Klaus says, “Well then I suppose I don’t, but I’m sure I can find someone.” 

He doesn’t mean any of it, just says it to be annoying, but that’s not the flavor of troubled that shades his brother’s face. It reminds him, again, of that day, the indescribable expressions Diego had worn, that had been new then and are now, apparently, a recurring thing like the rest of it. Klaus accidentally letting some little melodramatic sliver of his life peek through during an argument outside of a crime scene after Diego has swept in to save his sorry ass.

When Diego had shown up in that basement - the fear had been building up for too long, the withdrawals and the memories and the stories that the ghost girl Sara had been telling him about her last days, all of it piled on together was reaching a fever pitch and then his big brother cut through it all. Klaus is agnostic and sure, the light coming in from behind him was the first to reach Klaus’ eyes in days and that was probably the science reason that made things seem so glowy, but it really had felt in the moment like Diego was a haloed angel come to save him. The immediate relief from it was a physical thing, an overwhelming rush that made him stupid from gratitude. Stupid-er.

But the core of it wasn’t entirely off base. Diego’s no angel, he’s an extra dumbass in both senses of the adjective, but when he says grandiose superhero bullshit about wanting to do the right thing and make the world a better place, he does actually mean it, and usually not in a way that sets Klaus’s skin itching. In a better world, as a better person, Klaus would take his brother’s selfless goodness as inspiration for his own new leaf, march right into that murder house and have a chat with a crazed, murderous bastard and the son he killed. But he’s already kind of done a version of that schtick today. And as much as this feels like a retread of the Eddie stuff, there’s a few key differences, primarily that today he is, noticeably, missing his ghoulish Jiminy Cricket. He’s going to have to leave the hero work to his brother who doesn’t need a ghostly conscience to harass him into it.

He doesn’t have to be a total dick about it, though. “Thank you, for saving me back there.” He’s still too high a percentage of a dick to be able to say it while making eye contact, or without straining the two embarrassing words to make them sound sarcastic, but. He doesn’t specify which time, because, you know, both, all of it, always, but that part he _definitely_ can’t say out loud, not even with Irony Mode in full effect. He’s pretty sure Diego gets it, anyway. “I guess I’ll be seeing you next time I’m in mortal peril, so please don’t take offense, but I hope I’m in my 30s before we catch up again.”

“You don’t have to,” Diego says, in that strangled tone that means he’s having a hard time working around his stutter. Klaus is poised to go but he waits him out, waits for the lecture. 

‘You’ve got to stop being such a selfish fuck-up, because your self-destructive tendencies are hurting other people by really annoying me personally.’ And then Klaus can say, ‘Oh okay I should just be better? Thank you, I’m cured.’ and then swan off to get horrendously high.

“I - ” Diego says, “You could stick around. You could stay.” Klaus is fairly certain he doesn’t mean specifically stay outside of this house, because one, why, and two, the hesitation means it’s something more serious. “It doesn’t have to be meeting up on accident and splitting off our own ways again. I’ve been - We could - ”

‘We’ is a weighty word. Personally, Klaus finds it more concerning than the whole ‘maybe the law isn’t the answer’ brooding vigilante justice thing. Both of them in combination are even worse, and the next bit seals the bad news alarm deal. 

“Reginald was terrible, but - ”

“No, no no nope, got to cut you off there, that’s a full stop kind of sentence.” Today of all days, honestly. There is no ‘but’ after that.

“You’re right,” Diego says, his face open and his voice gravelly, and he won't break their eye contact. “He’s a bad man. I’m done with taking orders from bad people, but I still - I’d like to have a team, still. I’d like if _we_ were a team.”

We. A team. Literally none of his siblings ever wanted Klaus to be on their team, back in those totally normal childhood days of drills and training and stuff, but until Five turned them into five, it was only an even split if someone agreed to, as it were, play with a handicap. Definitely nobody has wanted him around, just in general, in fully actual plural multiple _years_.

He trills out a high giggle because he hasn’t responded yet. He doesn’t have a response. How are you supposed to respond to something like that?

Diego is still just _looking_ at him and it makes his skin prickle. 

“I’m not - I don’t - you - no, I - ” Klaus makes a scoffing sound and at least that cuts off whatever garbage was tumbling out of his mouth. He swallows and manages, “I’m not really in the headspace for any vigilante-ing at the moment.”

“At this moment, right now,” Diego says, steady and calm.

He’s the opposite of Klaus, who tosses his shoulders in a big casual exaggeratedly loose shrug, but he thinks his uncomfortable still comes through in the jerky head shake he can’t stop. “Or, any moment, really, if I can help it.” He smiles, going for rakishly self-deprecating. You know, this guy, what can you do, right?

Diego won’t join him, stuck in serious. His voice is so quiet when he asks, “Do you want help?” He clears his throat and adds, “To help?” Well, is it ‘adds’ or ‘corrects?’ It makes a difference.

And, either way, what in the hell is that supposed to mean, is what Klaus wants to know. 

“You know, I don’t think I have a whole lot of space to be in your quarter-life crisis Academy cover band when I fulfill such an important role in our family unit already. The family fuck-up, the punching bag for all the punch lines. No matter how much we fight, we can always find common ground in our agreement that I am The Worst.” He presses his hand to his chest, theatrically earnest. “Now that’s what I call sibling solidarity. You’re welcome.”

“I don’t think you’re the worst.”

Klaus has to do all the work to fix the tone of this conversation, apparently. “Well sure, I guess Luther exists, but.”

“No, I don’t mean - ” Diego interrupts himself because this is worth clarifying, “Luther is an asshole. But it’s not about that. You’re an idiot, but I actually do like you, Klaus.”

“No you don’t, take that back,” Klaus says, very unintentionally, but since it’s out there, he wishes it at least sounded bitter or angry or anything that isn’t vulnerable like he’s entirely made out of the hope that it might be true. “No.” 

A heavy, hot-cold tingling sweeps across him, tosses his brain outside of his body and stretches the moment glacier slow so that he can appreciate from a distance just how fully he is now panicking. It’s got to be some kind of delayed reaction that for some reason _now_ is when he’s freaking out, way harder than earlier, when he’d been literally electrocuted.

It’s not true. Diego’s lying, or he thinks he’ll be able to make Klaus change and he’ll be pissed when it doesn’t happen. Or he thinks that he means it right now, but give him some time and exposure and he’ll remember that he doesn’t like his irritating junkie brother after all. 

An insidious voice in his head suggests that maybe Diego really does mean it, and maybe he won’t take it back, and maybe what he’s saying is honest and real. “No. That’s not - no.” He’s taken a few steps backwards without even noticing.

“We could be a good team,” Diego is saying, and his eyes are big and shining, what actual genuine sincerity looks like. “I don’t have the nicest place, but it’s got to be better than whatever you’ve been doing out here, bro. We could get you back on your feet.”

What have his feet been doing this whole time, Klaus wonders, if he needs to get back on them? Actually, never mind, that’s not a metaphor he wants to delve into. 

“You don’t want me around, trust me. It would not take long for you to remember all the reasons you can’t stand me. Admit it,” he laughs, “I’d aggravate the shit out of you. You’d get sick of me and be finding a basement to stick me in even faster than Big Eddie did.”

“Klaus, _no_.” Diego’s expression starts to look a little disgusted, so there you go, he’s already well on his way. 

Time for Klaus to be on his way, too. “See ya,” he says, and flicks a little wave as he spins on his heel.

“Hold on, where are you going?” And Diego sounds frustrated, so that’s another check in the ‘Klaus is right’ column. Yay.

Klaus doesn’t stop putting distance between them. He blows a kiss over his shoulder and calls back, “To get unconscionably high.”

He’s not alone for long. Ben shows back up, finally, when he’s managed to figure out a plan and gotten himself only a couple of streets away from Big Eddie’s house. Both Ben and Sara are surprised when he ducks under the crime tape, although it’s worth noting that ‘surprise’ is a versatile reaction that can be made of vastly different emotions.

“Are you _serious_?” Ben is practically tearing his hair out. Yeah, Klaus continues to be not wrong about things, and he’s not wrong that he might be Number Four, but he is hands-down the family’s number one most annoying motherfucker.

“Been a long day, Ben,” Klaus snaps, with more bite than he means to, because he really can’t express how enormously grateful he is that Ben is back and, you know, as fine as a dead person can be, but also it _has_ been a long day and he is tired in a scratchy, sandpaper kind of way, and he’s just Not Interested in hearing it right now.

The house is full of bad memories but it’s also full of drugs, and it’s guaranteed to be empty. Empty of the living, anyway, but that’s pretty much the best Klaus can get until he makes use of the pharmaceutical amenities.

That’s priority number one, because Sara has an earful she wants Klaus to hear, too.

“Thank you, thank you so much.” She follows him around babbling this kind of nonsense at him. He didn’t do anything to help her, so he would really like her to please fuck off. “You got him out of here, you let my family find me - you saved me.”

Sara’s limbs are only held on by the faintest of imaginary strings, closer to her in the figurative grave than the actual physical ones. Her skin is a surrealist swirl of bruises, blisters, and burns and is always, continuously, melting away in viscous dribbles, as slow as molasses, but, you know, molasses made of a person’s flesh. She still looks pretty fucking dead to Klaus.

Yeah, he’s a real hero.

That his devastatingly potent proprietary blend of ketamine and opioids doesn’t kill him is a miracle, if that’s the way you want to look at it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, the response to 'Bad Stuff' was so mindblowingly nice I cannot explain to you, unless you have also written fic for this fandom and seen for yourself how incredibly supportive the readers are. Thank you so much for your feedback! It takes me a while, but you've got me writing stuff, slowly (operative word) but surely. 
> 
> A huge thank you to [@toomuchsky](https://toomuchsky.tumblr.com) for beta-ing for me!! She is lovely and a writer too and go check her out?? And also thanks to some folks who chatted with me about this fic (or more accurately just sat and listened while I would not. shut. up. about it) [@intricatecakes](https://intricatecakes.tumblr.com), and [@maundering-marauder](https://maundering-marauder.tumblr.com) who are also very very good and helpful people <3
> 
> You can come shout at me about this show on tumblr! I will totally shout back! [@hermitreunited](https://hermitreunited.tumblr.com)


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